Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure was not, by most metrics, a hit, but it wasn’t a failure either; it made a small amount of money in…
Like most pop stars who ascend to her level, Beyoncé Knowles is rather inscrutable — despite the ubiquitous image and brand. It’s hard to determine…
After being dropped by Interscope after his sole proper studio album on the label flopped (2012’s excellent Finally Rich), Chief Keef released a slew of…
Imagine being back in college, pre-gaming for the coolest house party on campus, with all the boys in one big smoke circle. Jared with the…
If there’s one thing Charlotte-based MC DaBaby understands best about our current streaming age, it’s that no attentive listener wants their time wasted. It’s easy…
Lil Pump’s debut mixtape was founded on a shamelessly glorified materialism — with a side of inescapable sexual and moral depravity. The oppressive, lo-fi beats…
Juice WRLD — “the brat of pop music” — released two projects last year, the misogyny-laden, emo-infused, but often sweetly-sung Goodbye & Good Riddance, and…
Lucki is a rapper who doesn’t give a damn about industry games, something he’s forthright about on the opener of Freewave 3: “They fuck with…
There’s an all-too-brief moment near the end of Drip or Drown 2 where Atlanta mumbler Gunna actually does something semi-interesting, by performing one of contemporary…
Yeo Siew Hua’s A Land Imagined is a strange beast, beginning as a straightforward, noir-inflected procedural before gradually giving way to a strange, dreamlike reverie, as…
In 1982, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released what’s largely considered the first ‘conscious’ mainstream rap single, “The Message,” a harrowing seven-minute journey into…
SoundCloud junkies Paul Attard and Joe Biglin run down some rap releases from the months of February and March in the latest What Would Meek…
When the Marvel Cinematic Universe started to come together in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it was not only fashionable but easy to pick…
World cinema has come a long way in the last two decades when it comes to queer representation in film. Yet despite the growing amount…
Set on the Sino-Burmese border, Peng Fei Song’s second feature, The Taste of Rice Flower, tells the story of Ye Nan (Ying Ze), a young…
Ding (Fan Wei) is the director of a farm during the heyday of the second Sino-Japanese war. He’s been tasked by a group of shareholders…
Yang Li-chou’s documentary Father is about Chen Hsi-huang, an octogenarian master of the budaixi Taiwanese hand puppetry. He is the student, and oldest son, of…
Cai Chengjie’s feminist fable The Widowed Witch plays-out across a succession of rural, wintry landscapes, through which travels Erhao (Tian Tian), a thrice-widowed woman who’s…
YouTube has made it easier than ever to disseminate the solipsistic musings of just about anybody — as we all have a tendency to willingly…
Set toward the tail end of the Cultural Revolution, Bangzi Melody presents the life of a small village as its inhabitants go about the tasks…
The inaugural CineCina — officially, New York’s only Chinese cinema-focused film festival — wrapped about a week ago. Featured in this report are just some…